At first, and for quite some time, he kissed me- my eyelids, my cheeks, my neck, my forehead, my chin, my hair, my mouth- and those kisses were like the creak of a hammock, the whisper of bees, sunshine.
His kisses melted into my skin, softening my lips, becoming a part of me.
I cupped his face, looked into his eyes.
“This is the last time.”
comforts
© cahughes
03.21.14
Sabrina described herself as ugly. She wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t pretty either. Still, there were times when she was busy not thinking about herself- like when she was lost in a good story or sautéing garlic or sleeping or feeding the fish- and the loss of her self-scrutiny relaxed the skin of her forehead, softened the surface of her eyes and made her lips fuller, let them be. She would look quite pretty then. It didn’t happen too often. Just enough for me to know it was a possibility, and that is what I loved about her.
We sat out back at sunset. A beetle crawled over her toes. They looked like wine grapes and I liked them. I reached down to remove the beetle and place it in the grass.
-Leave it, she said. -I like how Gregor’s little legs feel walking on my toes. She took a drag off her cigarette and stared at the sky that was orange and pink and purple. She claimed to have tens of millions of sisters, all of whom were prettier than she was, but none of them could compare to her at that moment.
Sabrina, unthinking and painted the colors of paradise, a beetle making a home in her toes, so ugly she was a saint.
sabrina’s lover
c A Hughes (Copyright 2011)
There was no moon so she couldn’t see him and she closed her eyes so they could adjust so she could see the shape of him. He scooted in close, licking the lid of her eye. -Why did you do that and he said he couldn’t see her and thought he was near her mouth. She wasn’t upset and the feeling was interesting. No one had ever licked her eye before.
She said- I like where you were going with that.
She slept in late and alone except there was the dregs of coffee in the coffee pot. And sticky spots on the kitchen counter around the coffee pot. And crumbs stuck to the sticky spots and a few ants nibbling on those crumbs. Only none of them were feeling very conversational.
She was angry at him for the spots, the crumbs, the ants at the crumbs and not being there so she could tell him she was angry. And she hated the ants eating the crumbs with their little antennae twitching these and those ways and how they flaunted their fellowship in front of her made her feel lonelier and angrier.
Instead, she took it out on the counter and those ants never had a chance. If he had been there, he may’ve been scrubbed clean away with the rough side of the sponge. Her legs quivered just as they had the night before. Her stomach felt full of germans in pike formation, or a skiff riding a tsunami or curdled milk mixed with sardine smell or like being alone in an elevator. The air felt awkward and tried to leave her. Her heart was no longer beating beat by beat but just one long, smooth vibration like the seat of his motorcycle between her thighs when she was straddled behind him and he took her for rides around the lake and how they leaned together into curves and how she wanted nothing more than to put her arms in the air and scream at the top of her lungs- I am going to die!
There were no words she recognized. A strange tongue. She sobbed when she told him on the phone that she felt possessed or dispossessed. She was not there anymore.
-I was a bird. Exotic and brightly colored with huge sick-yellow eyes cawing and cackling over my dead body. Or I was a shooting star a million years gone, eternally hurtling. Please come over.
And she sat up all night waiting. Another with no moon.
(Copyright 2011)
the anxiety attack
c A Hughes
Lolly felt his thumbs on the flesh just below her breasts. They were changing- her breasts, not his hands. Once hard and knobby, they were now softening, becoming heavier, shapely. At least he hadn’t said anything, as when she’d first began shaving her legs.
“Mmm, smooth,” he’d said, running his hand down her shin. They’d laughed, but later that night, she’d rubbed her legs together and felt like a strnger to herself. She didn’t know how her legs had felt before then, but now they were so soft. They were strange legs.
She bent back at her waist before him, her arms swirling slowly like two pale snakes that had just shed their skin. His hands tightened under her and his thumbs moved closer to the small undercurve of her breasts. Blood rushed to her temples. She thought of the orange and four crackers sitting in her stomach. When she ate them she’d pretended they were a burger and fries. Slowly she lifted her body towards him. It all felt rough.
“Lolly, be here for goodness’ sake,” Ms. Elizabeth said. “Let’s take a break.”
They all exited the stage. Her partner said, “You feel tense, tight. Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.”
She hated herself so much. Fourteen and getting soft in places she was supposed to be hard. Her cheeks were irritated and bumpy. And there was all that eye contact with her partner. She felt confused when he looked at her, but hadn’t he been looking at her like that for two years? She wasn’t sure; she couldn’t remember. All she knew is that she kept dreaming about him, and thinking about him when she was supposed to be doing homework.
It began when she’d lifted her leg high and straight in her last performance. She’d smiled out on the audience and noticed men and boys, even women and girls, were not looking at her face, but somewhere lower. She realized with horror that they were looking at her legs and crotch, which were exposed. Lolly asked Ms. Elizabeth why ballerina’s had to wear little tiny tutus?
“Because. It is lovely. A ballerina is a fairytale. A ballerina is a piece of art. Her legs are controlled, moving muscle and that is part of the art. That’s why.”
It hadn’t felt that way. It felt scary and a little exciting in a way she could not describe. She felt anxious and afraid but hadn’t known why. Then there had been her partner’s hand, gently cupping her calf. She later imagined that hand sliding up- under her knee, up her thigh, and she could picture no more. She tried, but her mind wouldn’t allow the picture to form.
Ms. Elizabeth clapped her hands. “Back to work children!”
a ballerina (469 words)
12.15.10
C A Hughes (Copyright 2010)
Anne holds Alvarez, no longer bothered by the thick sweet blood pumping out through the wounds in his chest and stomach. At first she’d been surprised by its generous oozing. It wasn’t gushing like the movies, or very thin or shiny, but it was more than she’d ever witnessed.
She was afraid of the presence of blood, the amount of it, what may be living within it.
Now she cradles the sweaty head of Alvarez in one hand, his blood on her cheek, her hands, some in her hair. She uses her other hand to press her jacket to the slashes on his body. Calling for help, she forgets what she is doing and realizes she has relaxed the pressure. The jacket squelches as she pushes down again.
“Alvarez, stay with me,” she says when his eyelids begin to slide close. She jiggles her arm around to shake his face awake.
“Alvarez!”
He tries to focus on her. He is mumbling something to her. A prayer maybe? Prayer is all they’ve got left it seems. How long has she been screaming for assistance? Feels like hours. It’s probably been closer to fifteen minutes. She closes her eyes and tries the lord’s prayer but doesn’t finish. She is seeing over and over the murder of Alvarez.
Anne was hailing a cab when three boys, or were they men? No. Grown men wouldn’t do such a thing. But boys wouldn’t either. No one would do a thing like this. Only these three did. Three people came out of the shadows. Maybe they weren’t human? And attacked this man. They hit him over the head with a stick? A bat? And when Alvarez fell, they did not stop.
The filth from their mouths, Anne thinks, rocking Alvarez in her arms. No one is going to help them.
At first, Anne had feared the lone man, standing against a building a few hundred feet ahead. She saw his brown skin, his work clothes. But it was those three with skin that held the moonlight, hands with weapons that gleamed in the same manner. Looking clean but squalor within. If Alvarez hadn’t been there, she would’ve been the one bleeding here. Dying.
She realizes she has again lessened the weight against the bleeding. She panics as she puts all her strength against him. She wants to thank him but he’s dead.
Anne holds Alvarez and cries.
holding alvarez (Copyright 2010)
04.27.10
Sir come, say: You mine, woman.
And he mark my back. He mark my seat. Say he gonna set me free only now ain’t the time. We got to wait. He come to my door though every day. Half of me hate when he turn up because we act like now the time when it ain’t. The other half joyful because just a slim sight of that time is better than sitting on my hands dying and waiting.
My people don’t like what we doing. Some of them say he ain’t never gonna set me free. “Why he do that when he own you? Why he gone to give away his property?” I think on this and it be a strong chance he go back on his word and I don’t know what stirs me up more- him not setting me free or him setting me free.
Others say he ain’t the one to set me free. Say, “Only you can set you free.” Or “Only the Almighty can set you free.” I wonder do I even want to be free. What would I do without him? Do I gots the power to do it for my own self? Times I think yes. Times I think no. And God don’t care for the bodies of folks. He deal in freeing the mind. The spirit. That means I could still die under this man. And if life is a toil such as it is and folks is living and dying according to life’s toil then how can a mind ever be truly free?
He say he love my skin. My body. My heart. I believe him some. He taking big chances coming to me. He kiss me and touch me. Not just take like some of his people do. Besides how can he take what I freely give?
He gentle to me. I love his skin next to me. When he come to my door, he ask can he come in. I never say no though I feel in my heart I should. But when I see him there and see his hands and his legs and his eyes my thighs catch afire. I love his weight on me. I look down at our legs tangled together like a nest of snakes and watch them move and fight and I feel like we One. He disappears inside me and becomes me.
When we apart I weep. I think his name over and over for comfort instead of calling on the name of the Lord. Oo it feel wrong and right all together. I fights inside me. The half that wish he never would come to my door again and the half that live and breathe him and it make me so tired all over. Which half gonna win?
Either way I lose.
her existing (Copyright 2009)
09.23-25.09
She lacks teeth and fullness. Her skin creased like yellowed linen but I began to love those hiding places, pockets of seventy year old sunlight, tears, evidence she smiled, slept, worked, grieved. She lacks fullness, but she is living and a real thing. Hair mostly sandy but those brilliant bouquets of silver. Queenly crown, angelic halo. She does not know how pure she is, purified by the fire of loneliness, constraint, being locked up. Broken into. Broken, put together. Broken. Put together again.
She gives me her sadness. She shows me her tears, talks about how diamonds are formed. Gives her humiliation to me. I love her for these gifts, so freely gives her memories to me. And when I leave her, the greatness of those wet eyes, their leaking sinks into the lines of her skin, her memories I take with me, go out to the car, masturbate.
How stunning she is, and her stout hands that have worked in dirt, fixed pipes. Wrung themselves translucent, rough, over young boys, her boys, her men. Always warm. Made of birch bark. Smelling of moist clean soil turned, open, waiting for seeds, pushed deep, watered, bloody red petals. She is virtuous. I desire her virtuousness. Not her frail body or its warmth but those secret places that are black and sucking. More secret, black, sacred than her physical body which is dying as mine is dying. Like we all are dying.
I sit next to her under the sun, wings of birds, the shadow of God. Feast on her dark secrets. Violations. Despair. I live here at her mouth, hover close. Her voice is low holy magic. Finger the back of her neck. I quiver at her crying eyes looking up at mine that have teeth, tongue, are ravenous.
I will kill me, she says.
How? My heart licks its lips.
Cord of the blinds in my room.
Some Saturdays, Mother took us on drives to the north end to see big houses with winding driveways and yards of green green grass. I don’t know if she was trying to torture or motivate herself. Perhaps to her, torture was motivation.
She’d drive with the windows down, the radio off and point. “Look at that one,” she’d say. “I wonder if they appreciate what they’ve got way we would. I bet they don’t even clean it themselves. How’d they make so much money?”
There were always those questions. “Do you think they have a maid? I bet they have parties all the time. How much is their electric bill? Who does their yard? Would they speak to someone like me?” And we would stop mid-squirm in the backseat. We thought she was asking us and we’d start thinking real hard, but we didn’t know the answers.
I liked looking into the windows. I liked to see other people’s walls. They looked crisp and white like snow. I imagined the interior of those homes to be silent, cool, odorless. Clean clean. The visible tops of couches and chairs appeared rich from our rusting little Nissan. Deep. And in my mind I could see myself sinking into them, eating an entire package of Oreos, which we could never afford. But if we lived here, we’d have a pantry full of Oreos and we could drink all the milk we wanted. There’d be a bowl full of the oranges I craved.
Our couch at home was lumpy, scratchy plaid.
And somehow, if we lived in one of these houses, my hair would be long and straight, I’d have lots of friends, my sisters would be angels, Daddy would be alive again and Mother would stop smoking and drinking coffee with amaretto all night.
Yet, these houses seemed so empty. They looked filled with whispers, tip-toeing. Lifeless.
Other Saturdays, Mother with her eyes soft and wet, would take us to the local drugstore to get thirty cent cones. “I’m sorry girls,” she’d say. We didn’t know why she apologized. We were happy. We had ice cream in our hands.
We’d follow her, dripping and sticky, to the pet shop next door and look at the puppies in the window, rolling around in wood shavings while licking our cones and fingers. By then I’d learn not to ask for a puppy. We couldn’t afford one no matter how cute or slick a puppy was or how we promised to take care of it. But my sisters, they’d start whining.
Mother, upset, would complain about how messy we were getting with our ice cream cones.
“Get in the car and stop all that whining,” she’d say. “So ungrateful.”
I’d feel guilty. I didn’t know how to be grateful for our ugly couch or not being able to get a puppy.
north end (Copyright 2009)
01.17.09
That’s me: the crooked hairline, the tender and slight swell of a new, second chin, the scars. Or it looks like me. There’s my red sweater I seem to have on in every picture. Why is my smile so hard, so thin? I hate being photographed. I hate looking at myself glossy and flat.
Have you ever heard that in some cultures it’s believed that pictures steal the soul? I have a slightly different take on this belief; that when a camera is aimed in my direction I feel so awkward and ugly, that my soul is pushed out of the shot. There’s no room for it.
I see my eyes. It was cold that day and I was sad because there’d been no sun for a few days. And I was jealous- stuffed between brothers and sisters and aunts, uncles, our grandparents and parents- of the joy of those others at perserving a memory which wasn’t really perserved. Because I haven’t seen most of them for four years. Because I don’t recall why we were all together then, or what was said.
I keep them all in a box covered with a vintage purse design. Mom on top of Scruffy. An old crumpled picture of Dad in his uniform, yellowing at the edges. My brother’s first car. My first day of kindergarten.
All meaningless but here, taking up space, taunting me to look. To remember.
To remember how awful I look through life.
foe-to
01.12.09
I watch a commercial filled with brown silk and an olive skinned brown eyed girl in its midst, indulging in a square of chocolate. It’s supposed to be gourmet. Probably expensive. Luxurious, sinful, selfish.
I’ve never seen a man in one of these lush, airbrushed, beatific ads. I guess men don’t eat chocolate unless it’s hidden between two meat patties or a candy bar.
But I eat chocolate like that. Ever since Shay.
We were both seventeen. She was shaped like a boy. She’d had big boy wrists and played guitar sitting on the hood of my car in her cut-offs and sandals. Meandering stuff, a string then another, but it sounded honest. I loved her.
I bought her candy and flowers. Well, my Ma bought the good candy- some deluxe sort of chocolate squares- and told me better than roses, poppies. White poppies. And when I bought them, I thought they were perfect for Shay.
She loved them, the poppies. And when she offered me a piece of the chocolate, I shoved the whole deal in my mouth. She laughed.
“You are supposed to take a little bite and let it melt on your tongue. It’s supposed to be an experience.”
Aw, c’mon Shay. Guys don’t suck candy.
“I know. You men have to show you’re tough by chewing. Not everything’s to be treated like a steak, my friend.”
And that laugh. That laugh that was calm and not at anyone but just was.
“I won’t tell any of our friends I’ve taught you to eat chocolate like a civilized gentleman. In front of them, you can cram it all in your mouth.”
She broke a little piece off and put it on my tongue, then put a piece on hers and we let it melt on our tongues, dark flavor spread over my tongue. And warmth, a warmth that began in my mouth and moved slowly all over my face.
“See?” Shay said. “An experience. Better than just a mouth full of goo right?” Then I remember the look on her face. “And here’s the best part…”
And she kissed me. A chocolate kiss. A slow dissolving, warm chocolate kiss. Real gourmet stuff. No kiss has come close, not even Helen’s- though she’s not too shabby, I’ve got to say. She’s kept me in a good supply of kisses for going on thrity years now.
But there’s never been another like Shay.
Anyway. Every time I see one of these commercials, I think of Shay. Every damn time, but I gave up chocolate the day she died. But I don’t need it anymore.
It’s still with me, still on my tongue.
Melting.
chocolate in the masculine
(Copyright 2008)
11.23.08
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